… is from page 149 of Morgan Reynolds’s 1986 paper “On the Economics of the Colour Bar,” which appears as the final chapter of W.H. Hutt: An Economist for the Long Run (Morgan O. Reynolds, ed., 1986) (link added):
In Professor Hutt’s lifetime work, his Economics of the Colour Bar displays his fearless courage, demonstrates the power of simple economic theory in the hands of a master, reinforces the unity of his work, and once again verifies that the release of market restraints is the means to maximum employment and output. Capitalism is the solution, not the problem.
DBx: Hutt (pictured here) was indeed courageous. Then living full-time in South Africa, he published his highly critical analysis of apartheid in 1964, when South Africa’s apartheid government was in power. And yet a handful of ignorant – I’ve no kinder appropriate descriptor – ‘scholars’ are on an ideologically charged quest to portray Hutt as a white supremacist.
The ‘scholars” purpose in their quest is to help salvage a certain Duke University ‘historians” egregiously mistaken argument that the late Nobel-laureate economist James Buchanan was a white supremacist. You see, in 1965, while on the faculty at the University of Virginia, Buchanan invited Hutt to visit UVA – a move that, given Hutt’s well-known opposition to South Africa’s “colour bar,” is difficult to square with the assertion that Buchanan was racist.
…..
These ‘scholars’ (who in their ignorance nevertheless insist on writing about Hutt – and about Buchanan) tirelessly twist the meaning of their and others’ words. If someone with whom they ideologically disagree were to write “dogs bark, they don’t meow,” these scholars are not above quoting this someone as believing that “dogs … meow.” Yet if someone with whom they are ideologically aligned were to write “cats bark, they don’t meow,” these scholars will insist that their ideological comrade of course isn’t so daft as to believe that cats bark; “Look,” they’ll self-righteously insist, “our friend wrote clearly that ‘cats … meow.'”
None of these ‘scholars’ is, of course, really a scholar, despite the fact that some of them occupy faculty positions at elite universities. They are ideologues who are led by their emotions to particular conclusions – usually mistaken ones – and then craft ‘narratives’ or ‘histories’ in attempts to justify their conclusions. Fortunately, their skills at telling false tales are no better than are their skills at actual scholarship. The fallacies peddled by these ‘scholars’ are easily detected by anyone who can read and who isn’t baffled by basic rules of logic.
